Tag: red dead redemption 2

Every year is a great year for gaming, but 2018 in particular was full of big payoffs for blockbuster games like Marvel’s Spider-Man, God of War, Super Smash Bros. Ultimate, and Red Dead Redemption II.

Despite working as a freelance writer who covers games, I definitely didn’t play all the games I wanted to this year. But I still came away with a list of 10 fantastic games that I absolutely loved.

This was the year I finally acquired a Switch, though not until November. As everyone already knows it’s a great system and the gaming world feels better with Nintendo succeeding. You definitely saw some Switch games on my Top Ten list!

On the flip side, the Nintendo 3DS has been all but retired, and this is the first time in years at least one 3DS game isn’t on my game of the year list.

My Top Ten Games of 2018

Metroidvanias and roguelikes are two of the most overused genres, and buzzwords, in indie gaming, but it’s still a genre I tend to love. Dead Cells is anything but a tiresome retread, pulling the best elements of both genres into an instantly likable neon art style of colorful death.

I’m an easy target for any game that features tactical, XCOM-like turn-based combat. Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden had the dubious potential to become a budget XCOM – which I probably still would have enjoyed. But by combining solid tactical gameplay with rewarding stealth mechanics and shockingly good voice acting Road to Eden carves its own space in the genre.

Pokémon Let’s Go, Pikachu! and Let’s Go, Eevee! are charming and delightful recreations of the original Pokémon Red/Blue/Yellow games. Adventuring through a fully 3D Kanto is a delicious nostalgia fest but it’s the little improvements that really kept me hooked, like being able to swap your party out on field, drop-in co-op, and not having to teach the critical Hidden Machine skills just to get around.

I admit that 2016’s Planet Coaster is ostensibly a better, and more robust theme park game, but I’m a huge sucker for dinosaurs and Jurassic World Evolution is the closest thing to a Jurassic Park dream game I’ve been waiting over a decade for.

Out of all the games on this list Into the Breach is the one I plan on returning to the most. Its delicate tactical balance splashed with just the right amount of RPG elements make it more than a worthy follow-up to Subset Games’ previous hit, FTL.

It may be too early to tell if Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is the best of the series, but it’s certainly one of the best games of the year. With over 70 fighters, 100 stages and hundreds and hundreds of music tracks it’s well-deserving of its ‘Ultimate’ designation.

If you’ve ever sighed wistfully and declared that they don’t make them like they used to in regards to traditional RPGs, Dragon Quest 11 is here to grab you by the arm and usher you into a gloriously sincere world of monsters and charm.

If I had to choose one single game from the last console generation as my absolute favorite, there’s an excellent chance I would settle on Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar Game’s sequel is bigger and deeper than anyone could have imagined.

I never expected to like this game, let alone fall in love with it. After my first week of playing I feverishly told my friends they had to pick it up, and what followed was dozens of hours of both solo and cooperative greatness as we mastered our favorite weapons, familiarized ourselves with the colorful hunting grounds, and studied the deadly dance of each monster so we could craft better gear and do it all again.

Every year in January I publish my top ten most anticipated games of the year. Now it’s payoff time as we get to remark on how close – or embarrassingly far off, my predictions were!

Four out of ten made my Game of the Year list – same as last year! Three of these games didn’t come out this year: Bloodstained, Spelunky, and Griftlands.

That leaves us with three games: Pillars of Eternity 2, State of Decay 2, and The Bard’s Tale 4.

Out of those three I only played one of them. Despite the first Pillars of Eternity being my #1 Game of the Year in 2015, the sequel shockingly failed to grab me in a meaningful way. I actually replayed part of Pillars 1, along with The White March DLC (part 1 anyway) to prep for the sequel.

But when I finally got around to playing Pillars 2, I just didn’t get sucked in like I was expecting, and the whole pirate/ship theme is a bit jarring. Thus, Pillars 2 wins the rather dubious honor of being my most disappointing game of the year. It’s not a bad game, but I was expecting it to be one my favorites of the year.

As for the other two, I didn’t play them. I read mixed things about State of Decay 2, a game that has been on my most anticipated lists for years (I LOVED the first one). But I also don’t have a modern Xbox console and I’m not super keen to use the Windows 10 store.

As for Bard’s Tale 4, I just didn’t have time for you (winning another dubious award). So many games, so little time! I’m still very interested in how this one plays and really want to try it next year.

I also publish a Mid-Year list in June, celebrating my top five games, as well as my five most anticipated games for the latter half.

The mobile game Jurassic World Alive fell off for me as I actually got back into Pokémon GO thanks to Pokémon: Let’s Go. The rest remained strong going into the finals, with no game able to dethrone the greatness of Monster Hunter: World.

Here were my top five most anticipated games for the second half of 2018 (alphabetical):

The Bard’s Tale IV

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night

Fallout 76

Red Dead Redemption II

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Red Dead and Smash are obvious inclusions. Bard’s Tale and Bloodstained were Kickstarter games I’d been looking forward to, and both I already mentioned above.

As for Fallout, well, I’m a big Fallout fan but Fallout 76 appears to have some major issues as Bethesda stumbles a bit with its first multiplayer game. Given all the very excellent multiplayer games and modes that released this year, I’m okay with skipping it.

2018 End of Year Awards

Most Played: Monster Hunter: World (102 hrs)

Best Multiplayer: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Best Cooperative Game: Monster Hunter: World

Biggest Surprise: Monster Hunter: World

Most Disappointing: Pillars of Eternity II: Deadfire

Best Early Access/Beta Game: N/A this year!

Best Original Music: Dragon Quest XI: Echoes of an Elusive Age

Best Soundtrack: Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

Best Art Design: Dead Cells

Best World Building/Atmosphere: Red Dead Redemption II

Best Writing: Red Dead Redemption II

Best Game Nobody Else Played: Mutant Year Zero: Road to Eden

Most Improved Sequel:Monster Hunter: World

Favorite New Game Mechanic: Swapping out Pokémon on the fly in Pokémon: Let’s Go

Backlogged Games Finished in 2018

A new section I’m adding to my already lengthy year end post – the backlogged games I played (and hopefully finished) this year. I never have enough time to play through my backlog, but this year I made a better effort than the last few years.

My biggest accomplishment was playing through every single Uncharted game, having never before played a single game in the series. Hit the link for my Final Thoughts on each game.

#2 Red Dead Redemption II

Developer: Rockstar GamesPublisher: Rockstar GamesPlatforms: PS4, XBO

If I had to choose one single game from the last console generation as my absolute favorite, there’s an excellent chance I would settle on Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar Game’s sequel is bigger and deeper than anyone could have imagined.

I’m normally not a big fan of prequels, yet Red Dead Redemption left an intriguing backstory: the fall of the Dutch Van Der Linde gang. Red Dead Redemption II is set ten years earlier, with John Marston one of a whole group of people who live outside the towns and outside the law, unified by unflinching loyalty and camaraderie, even as their world view, and leadership, come crashing down around them.

It’s hard not to fall in love with the Van Der Linde gang. The main story runs everyone through an emotional journey filled with terrifying depravity, exciting dangers, and delightfully quiet moments of celebration and joy. New protagonist Arthur Morgan is a likably sturdy compass, a pragmatic warrior-poet amid the unfolding chaos and eccentric characters around him.

Red Dead 2 isn’t just an open world playground nor a Western-themed GTA. It’s far more introspective and realistic, at least as realistic as a game that lets you pay your way out of mass murder can be. Everything is painstakingly detailed and boldly time-consuming, from brushing and feeding your horse to cooking meat over a campfire to browsing through old-timey catalogs to purchase provisions, clothes, and ammunition. More than anything Red Dead 2 is a true Western simulator while still keeping all the fun gameplay bits that Rockstar is known for.

You’re given the freedom to rob trains, search for buried treasure, track down bounties, clean out a poker table, hunt and track dozens of wild animals, take a bath, fish with friends, and enjoy the countless emergent events and stories that pop up while you travel. And there will be travel – Red Dead 2‘s map is ridiculously huge, and even fits in almost the entirety of the original Red Dead’s map on top of it.

Red Dead 2 easily features some of the best writing, voice acting, and production values of any game this year. Some of my favorite moments in the game didn’t involve a single gun shot, such as the surreal, Guy Ritchie-esque drunken revelry with Lenny in Valentine, or the several camp celebrations where the group comes together to sing, dance, and share stories. It truly makes you feel like you are part of a living, breathing world that’s a joy to spend time in, no matter what you’re doing.

Rockstar is a unique company that only releases one or two games each generation, and those games often make a very big splash. Despite the anticipation, Red Dead Redemption 2 went well beyond my expectations for my dream Western game.

But this, this is my personal list of the ten games I’m most looking forward to in 2018. Hindsight always kills me at least a little bit by the end of the year, but that’s part of the fun of making these lists.

Hopefully we won’t have another Mass Effect: Andromeda on our hands. Only two games from last year’s Most Anticipated list got pushed back to (hopefully) this year, and as always there will be plenty of new announcements and surprising indie debuts that I’ll fall in love with it. And a big choice I’ll have to make this year is whether to take the Nintendo Switch plunge.

One of the last games I backed on Kickstarter, despite no nostalgia for the old Bard’s Tale cRPGs. InXile hasn’t been making waves like Larian and Obsidian but they’re doing solid work, and this first-person RPG is shaping up nicely.

Both DQ 7 and DQ 8 remasters still lie unfinished on my 3DS, but I’m still looking forward to the first true main single player Dragon Quest RPG in a long time. I may actually be more exited for the 3DS version over the fancy big console release, as the bottom screen replicates the entire game in a classic 16-bit art style.

I have so many fond memories of playing the first Spelunky. Its intuitive 2D platformer gameplay yet intricate challenge got its hooks in me real bad. The sequel was announced with only a teaser trailer and no gameplay, but I’m already sold.

The master of Castlevania, Koji Igarashi, crowdfunded this Castlevania-like 2D action-RPG back in 2015, and I’m 100% on board. It’s been a long time since I’ve enjoyed a proper 2D Castlevania, and Bloodstained looks to scratch that demonic itch beautifully.

Planet Coaster is an amazing RollerCoaster Tycoon-like that just barely missed my top ten list of 2016. The same developers are making a sim theme park game with the Jurassic World/Jurassic Park license. I was a big fan of Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis back in 2003 and can’t wait to see what Frontier can do with it.

It was on my list last year but we heard almost nothing about it. I’m still very excited for the sequel to one of my favorite games of 2013. The inclusion of multiplayer should fit perfectly with the blend of zombie action and survivor management.

I’ve sunk hundreds of hours into various Grand Theft Auto games over the years, but none made such a mark on me as Red Dead Redemption, the rare game I loved both with single player and online multiplayer. Red Dead Redemption 2 has been a very long time coming, and I’m excited to dive into the Old West again.

Every year is seemingly the best game ever for gaming. But 2017 will give us a new Mass Effect, new Zelda, and new Nintendo console with the Nintendo Switch. That’s an incredible lineup, and there’s even more to come, like Super Mario Odyssey, Red Dead Redemption 2, and Horizon Zero Dawn. Indie titles continue to generate huge buzz as well, with games like Yooka-Laylee, Tacoma, and Night in the Woods coming this year.

We’ve survived the hellscape of 2016. But we also played a ton of really great games. Meanwhile 2017 will give us a new Nintendo console, new Zelda, new Mass Effect, and a ton of big Kickstarter indie games I’ve been looking forward to for years.

This is my annual Top Ten Most Anticipated Games List. If you’ve been reading my Top Ten Game of the Year lists you know how fun it is to compare these predictions at the end of the year. I predict that I’ll be much more accurate this year – since literally half the games on this list carried over from last year’s Most Anticipated list!